Impeachment Lessons: What saved Clinton from Nixon's fate

[Bernardo de La Paz]

Pew Research wrote in 2009 (emphasis added):

The Public Saves President Clinton’s Job

Of all the opinions that polls have tracked in the modern era, none has been more remarkable than President Bill Clinton’s approval ratings rising on the news of allegations that he had carried on an affair with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. A Pew Research Center poll in mid-January 1998 found that 61% of its respondents approved of the way the president was handling his job.11 Two weeks later, Clinton’s ratings spiked to 71%, reflecting public outrage over the way the media had prejudged Clinton’s guilt.12 The same trend was recorded in Gallup and other national surveys. The Pew Research poll analysis found the public more discontented with the president’s accusers in the news media than upset by Clinton’s alleged misbehavior.13

The public’s unexpected rallying to Clinton’s side led to a transformation of the Washington establishment’s judgment of his political viability. Before news of Clinton’s polling boost, political insiders had all but written him off. Public support for the president allowed, if not encouraged, congressional Democrats to rally to his side.

The impact of Clinton’s standing in the polls along with growing antipathy toward the president’s accusers were also potent factors in the impeachment debate and the broader politics of that contentious midterm year. The public stood by Clinton through each chapter of the saga: his grand jury testimony, his admission of lying, the revelations of the Starr report, and ultimately the Republican vote to impeach him. He ended the year with a 71% approval rating. His party actually picked up eight seats in the House of Representatives — an unusual occurrence for a second-term president, let alone one about to be impeached. It is inconceivable to think that public opinion could have had such an impact in an era prior to the emergence of the media polls.